Message communications, with such features as being express, convenient, economical, and rich in content and form, have become a communication manner which is widely used by network users and which includes such examples as: text message, multimedia message, Email and Instant Message (IM). Because each model has a different capability, various types of existing terminals support many communication manners that are consequently different from one another more or less. For example, a Personal Computer (PC) does not support multimedia message and text message, a terminal with a monochromatic display does not support multimedia message, and some mobile phones do not support Email, IM, etc.
An existing message processing system is composed of a server and a client, in which the server is used for forwarding messages, implementing communications among different networks, and coping with abnormal conditions at terminals (for example, a memory in a terminal is fully occupied); and the client is used for generating and parsing messages and communicating with the server. Since neither the client nor the server has a function of converting the message format, a terminal, if not supporting a certain communication manner, can neither recognize the information expressed by the communication manner nor send or receive the information expressed by the communication manner, and thus can not communicate, by means of the information expressed by the communication manner, with a terminal supporting the communication manner.
At present, it has come true in the prior art that a text message or a multimedia message can be converted into an Email, so that when a user sends a message with a terminal supporting text message or multimedia message to a PC not supporting text message or multimedia message, he or she may enter the Email address of the recipient into the recipient address of the text message or multimedia message. When the text message or multimedia message arrives at the text message or multimedia message gateway, the gateway sends the content of the text message or multimedia message as the content of an Email to the recipient's Email address, taking the recipient's Email address as the recipient address.
Established in June 2002, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) includes the world's major mobile operators, devices and network providers, information technology companies, application developers and content providers. The principal pursuit of the OMA is a system-irrelevant and open standard that allows all kinds of applications and services to be interconnected and intercommunicated with one another over all kinds of terminals throughout the globe. Defined in the Instant Messaging and Presence Service (IMPS) defined by the OMA, the manner of conversion between an IM and a text message implements the message conversion between the IM and the text message. When a terminal user sends a text message to a PC not supporting text message, if he or she enters an IM user's name into the recipient address, the text message gateway sends the text message to the PC corresponding to the IM user's name. Similarly, a user should also enter the number of the recipient's terminal into the recipient address when sending an IM to the terminal by means of IM.
In the process of implementing the present invention, the inventor has noticed that in the prior art, a terminal user at the sender side should be aware beforehand of information of the model and capability of the terminal at the recipient side in order to enter appropriate information of the recipient address into the recipient address of a message, thereby achieving conversion of the message format. However, with the expansion of the social circle of terminal users due to their needs in all aspects such as business and living, it becomes increasingly cumbersome and less likely for them to bear in mind information of many models and capabilities of many terminals. Moreover, with the constant update of terminal types, there is a possibility that users may change their terminals frequently, which also frustrates terminal users with great inconvenience in keeping track of and ever updating information on the terminal model and capability of users in contact therewith. In addition, each terminal user needs to store all the contact information of terminal users in contact therewith, which occupies a relatively larger storage capacity and requires a terminal with a relatively higher storage performance.
Furthermore, an existing gateway, when forwarding a message to a recipient, simply forwards them to the recipient address pre-entered by the sender rather than selecting an appropriate communication manner in accordance with the content of the message and information of the capability of the terminal at the recipient side. Consequently, the terminal at the recipient side cannot properly recognize or display the content of the message if, in the message, there exists content of message not supported by the selected communication manner, thereby bringing terminal users great inconvenience, and even certain loss if the content of message is of considerable importance.
Therefore, a need exits for an improved system and method for message converting to overcome the problems stated above.